Rants and Raves on Espresso

It’s time for another espresso review along Oakland’s Rockridge trail.

This coffee shop is the kind that only seems to thrive near a university. It’s a more spacious café than some of its espresso-serving neighbors along College Ave. There are a couple of sidewalk café tables in front, some limited table seating in front at the entrance, and a large rear area with a colorful coffee-growers mural, decorative burlap coffee bags, skylights, and many small café tables and studious people at laptops.

Did we mention laptops?

Free Wi-Fi is the name of the game here. For the clientele, they are like flies to a bug lamp. The locals even seem to adjust their coffee orders accordingly: bigger mugs of filter coffee that they can nurse for hours on end. So of course, we instead ordered the house espresso.

They use Tony’s Coffee, which they sell on site — and bill heavily as “Fair Trade/Organic” as required by the locals. Using a two-group Promac, they pull a short shot with an even, thinner, medium brown crema that dissipates quickly. It’s watery and light, and really quite sour actually — something we believe can be traced back to a rather tepid brewing temperature.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t taste much of any earthiness nor pepper nor pungency beyond the sourness: it was that strong. Time to tune the machine, folks.